18-Year Prison Sentence Compounds Tragedy Of Teen Mom's Deadly Crime

January 29, 2012|Rick Green

Panna Krom was a Danbury High School senior, a onetime cheerleader and athlete bound for college, who hid her pregnancy from her family.

She delivered her baby, panicked, and drowned the infant in the toilet in December of 2006. Facing more serious charges, she pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter and agreed to an 18-year prison sentence.

We can all agree that Krom should be punished for drowning her newborn baby daughter. Few crimes touch us more deeply than a mother who kills her child.

Sending a teenage girl to jail for 18 years is what I can't get over.

With five years of good behavior, there may be a sliver of hope that Krom, a creative, driven young woman, won't spend her entire youth behind bars. Her lawyer plans to request that her sentence be reduced, pointing to the five years Krom has been incarcerated at the York Correctional Institution in Niantic.

"It's pretty difficult. Especially in a case like this where a child was killed. They don't take this very lightly,'' said Jennifer Tunnard, Krom's lawyer. "She is a well-spoken and modest young lady who has a potential for greatness."

A baby was killed. Panna Krom was an ignorant, fearful teenager who made a mistake. Should justice be about ruining another life?

A child of immigrants from Thailand, Krom grew up in a close family where dishonoring your parents wasn't an option. She planned on college and had good grades. Then she got pregnant.

She precisely fits the profile of mothers who commit neonaticide — the killing of a child less than 24 hours old. These women generally don't have a psychiatric disorder. Like Krom, they are quiet, young, and in an extreme state of denial.

These aren't excuses, but it's an important insight into a crime we ought to be viewing with deeper understanding instead of a punitive 18-year prison term.

"The woman doesn't view the baby as a baby. They are in such massive denial. They view it as something passing through their body," said Catherine Lewis, a forensic psychiatrist at the University of Connecticut and an expert witness in neonaticide cases around the country. "Most of these women are very unlikely to re-offend.''

Krom still faces more than a dozen years behind bars, while in other similar crimes — some right here in Connecticut — the courts have handled things far differently. In 1997, a Cheshire 18-year-old was sent to jail for 18 months in a similar case. In other states and countries, neonaticide often results in far-less severe prison sentences, if any at all, according to research by Theresa Porter, a psychologist at Connecticut Valley Hospital in Middletown.

When we met recently in a small conference room at York, Krom , a baby-faced 22-year-old, seemed resigned to her long prison sentence — and committed to a different life.

"It took incarceration to turn things around for me," Krom said. "I made a mistake in life. But I'm not confined to a stereotype of being an inmate. Obviously I have changed. I want to do great things in life once I leave here. … I've learned not to hide or to be afraid or to be ashamed. Everybody is capable of change."

"My No. 1 goal once I leave here is to make a difference in someone's life … especially young adults.'' When she was pregnant, Krom said, "I felt isolated. I felt I didn't have resources. I want to send the message out that there is help. There are resources.''

A girl who got pregnant at 16, was arrested at 17, and convicted as an adult at 18, Krom says she is now a young woman who tries to take advantage of everything prison can offer. She has earned her high school diploma and is now enrolled in a college degree program. She has joined therapy and spiritual groups and is a mentor who counsels other young inmates. In the back of her mind, she still thinks about becoming an athletic trainer, once her dream career.

"My parents are immigrants. They built this life for my brother and me. I wish I would have appreciated that much more,'' Krom said. "I regret my choices."

"I had to grow up fast in here,'' Krom told me before we parted. "I didn't know what I was going to do. No one in my family had any experience like this before.

"Now, it's like I take every opportunity I can."

A defenseless child died. A scared teenager who should have been tried as a youthful offender was sent to jail for 18 years. We can't change what happened, but Panna Krom ought to be given a chance to prove she can help others before they suffer her miserable fate.